Lady Gaga's third album is "finished", the singer has revealed, but won't be released until early next year. The "odd couture" pop star will reportedly issue the album in March or April 2011, making it her third record in as many years.

"It came so quickly," Gaga told Rolling Stone. "I've been working on it for months, and I feel very strongly that it's finished right now. Some artists take years. I don't. I write music every day." As ever, Gaga's bravado is matched by her theatricality. She plans to announce the album title at midnight on New Year's Eve – by inking it permanently on to her body. "I'm gonna get the album title tattooed on me and put out the photo," she said. Perhaps it will be called I [heart] Mum.

Whereas The Fame and its expanded follow-up The Fame Monster consisted mostly of "soulless electronic pop", at least according to their author, Gaga said her new songs are a little more ambitious. "I have been for three years baking cakes. Now I'm going to bake a cake that has a bitter jelly," she said. "The message of the new music is now more bitter than it was before. Because the sweeter the cake, the more bitter the jelly can be."

The last time Lady Gaga spoke about her forthcoming album, she was mostly mumbling platitudes. "It [will be] the anthem for our generation," she wrote in March. Her recording sessions in Liverpool included "the greatest music I've ever written", she insisted. "I've already written the first single for the new album and I promise you, that this album is the greatest of my career." That is, until the next one.